Bottum on the Gardner execution

Jody Bottum laments Utah's execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner:

There is, in fact, only a single reason that Ronnie Lee Gardner died last night—a single explanation that makes any sense at all. And it is that he deserved it. The murder he committed twenty-five years ago still cries to the heavens for justice.

And maybe it does. Certainly it does. But where, exactly, does the State of Utah get the authority to answer the calls on heaven? Where, exactly, does a modern nation, founded on no deliberate godly principle, derive its power to kill in the name of high justice? This is a nation, after all, that refused—with the infamous “mystery” passage in Casey v. Planned Parenthood—to protect the unborn, precisely because, the Supreme Court said, no such metaphysical foundation can be imposed by government. So where do these assertions of divinely based power for the death penalty come from?

It cannot be simply that the government is the one in power; there has surely been, sometime in the history of the world, such a thing as an illegitimate government. For that matter, there has surely been, at some point, an illegitimate claim of power by an otherwise legitimate government. The question of authority for a government’s action cannot be simply dismissed or ignored. Justice there must, and will be, for Ronnie Lee Gardner’s crimes—but political theory demands some account of why the prison system of Utah gets to enact and impose that justice.

Judging from the comments to the post, Bottum's condemnation of the death penalty is not popular among the First Things readership.  It's an interesting conversation.